Local teens learn driving skills

By Sarah Tressler :
March 22, 2013
: Updated: March 23, 2013 12:24am

Anyssa Villanueva wears goggles that mimic the impaired vision that accompanies drinking as she navigates a course during the Ford Driving Skills for Life event.

Photo By Billy Calzada/San Antonio Express-News

Teenagers enrolled in the Ford Driving Skills for Life event listen as Police Chief William McManus speaks on Friday, March 22, 2013.

Driving Skills for Life Michael Chavarria: Manny Martinez, a driving instructor with Driving Skills for Life, describes how to come out of a fishtail skid for 17-year-old Michael Chavarria, a student at Brooks Academy.

Driving Skills for Life Victoria Morton: 18-year-old Victoria Morton, a student at Henry Ford Academy, talks about why she thinks the Driving Skills for Life program is important.

More Information

Ford's Driving Skills for Life

When: 7:30 a.m.-noon and 12:30-5:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday

Where: Manheim Auto Auction, 2042 Ackerman Road

Cost: Free

More info: drivingskillsforlife.com

Crashes are the No. 1 cause of death for U.S. teens. Aware of that sobering statistic, the Police Department has joined with Ford's Driving Skills for Life program to help local teens learn to escape dangerous situations or avoid them altogether.

In one exercise, 18-year-old Nathan Carrizales winds through a tight course lined with short orange cones. The turns are tight, but he gets through with little trouble.

Then instructor Dan Clarke, 29, tells Carrizales to take out his iPhone and start texting a friend. Clarke dials the radio's volume up almost all the way, and the gnashing of heavy metal guitars fills the car as Carrizales makes his way through the course again.

It's been drizzling all morning, and over the noise, Clarke asks Carrizales to turn on the windshield wipers, then the London native asks him to change the station to the BBC World Service news station.

The short orange cones drop like flies as Carrizales fumbles for the wiper switch, his thumb on his phone's keypad, while trying to steer and change the radio station.

“We work them to the point of task saturation — too many things happening at once,” program spokesman Mike Speck said.

Teens go through four exercises during the program over a half-day: distraction, vehicle handling, simulated impairment and hazard recognition. A professional driving instructor is in the front passenger seat guiding the drivers through each exercise safely.

“The goal is to make the participants realize what could happen,” Speck said. “If they're forced into that scenario, it's going to be a little bit more difficult to get out of it than they think it will be.”

In the hazard recognition drill, the teens accelerate toward three stoplights.

As they approach, two turn red and one turns green, and the teens have to switch to the lane with the green light.

“Just because you recognized a hazard does not mean it's easy to find a way out, and if they do find a way out, it's not that easy to get there,” Speck said.

For simulated impairment, participants wear “drunk goggles” that mimic the vision of someone with a 0.17 blood-alcohol level, then are asked to go through a field sobriety test by a police officer. Each teen wobbled or tripped as they tried to walk a straight line heel-to-toe or tried to stand on one foot.

Finally, each participant is paired with an instructor in a Ford Mustang equipped to lift the back tires during a turn, causing the back end to fishtail.

Vehicle handling instructor Manny Martinez takes the Mustang through a series of U-turns that fishtail the back end as he spins the steering wheel to straighten the car back out, then walks Michael Chavarria, 17, through the steps he should take to do the same.

“You need to anticipate rather than react,” Martinez tells Chavarria. “As long as I'm looking at where I want the car to go, that's where I'm going to steer.”